Myriam Badaoui, the woman who accused 17 neighbours of paedophilia in 2001, has just admitted lying. Alex Duval Smith reports on a case that has ruined lives and blighted the judicial system

Sunday May 23, 2004
The Observer

The tour de Renard housing estate stands like a pristine Lego block. The balconies on its three white towers have been painted red and blue. The stairway walls are powder yellow. Its two basketball courts have been given fresh lines and nets. Dotted around the perfect lawns are swings and climbing frames. It looks like a playground paradise. The trouble is, there are no longer children in the Tour de Renard.
Four years ago, the estate - in Outreau, on the outskirts on Boulogne - was racked by a series of sensational allegations of child abuse. A total of 17 adults were dragged into what was believed to be France's worst-ever paedophilia case, involving chains, video porn, bestiality with alsatians and murder.

Then last week, in an equally spectacular turn of events, the key witness - 37-year-old mother of four Myriam Badaoui - retracted all the accusations she had made against her neighbours, many of whom had spent two years in custody. 'I am a sick woman and a liar,' she told the Assizes Court in St Omer.

She exonerated two of the accused - 'Madame Godard never came to my home, never did anything to my children. Pierre Martel, I would have liked to have a father like you' - then one by one listed all the defendants and exculpated each.

One of them, Karine Duchochoy, said: 'All the truth has come out, it's finished. I'm going to find my little boy again. It's three years since he was taken off me and I had done nothing.'

At a stroke, the shame which had hung over so many people was lifted. But the stain on the French justice system will not be so easily eradicated, for this is a story of lives blighted by an event described last week by one lawyer as 'a judicial Chernobyl'. How the suffering triggered by this case was allowed to drag on for years is a question that many key officials are struggling to answer.

Father-of-seven François Mourmand died of a drugs overdose in jail after 17 months in 'preventive detention'. Bailiff Alain Marécaux nearly died after a 93-day hunger strike in prison. He has lost his marriage, his children and his business. His nurse wife, Odile, who was also accused of rape, has lost her job. Their three children have been taken into care.

Taxi driver Martel, 55, has been in jail since November 2001, under formal investigation for the alleged rapes of six minors and accused of driving Badaoui and her ex-husband, Thierry Delay, to Belgium for paedophilia sessions.

'You realise that it could happen to each and every one of us. Pierre had been a taxi driver for 30 years. He knew Badaoui because she had called him occasionally to drive the family to the local hypermarket,' says his wife, teacher Christine Martel.

I think she should get the same sentence as the accused would have recieved.

Q

highsea

05-26-2004, 03:21 AM

We had a case a few years back in a town in Eastern Wa. It is known today as the Wenatchee Witchhunt.

60 defendants were charged with nearly 30,000 criminal acts involving 43 children, many of whom gave statements that were coerced by the investigators and CPS agents.

Most of the defendants were eventually acquitted or had charges dropped—several after initially being convicted—in large part after a group of volunteer lawyers undertook to represent them. Families were separated from their children, several defendants spent more than 5 years in prison. There may be some still in prison today, I don't know.

The town has never recovered from it.

http://www.ags.uci.edu/~dehill/witchhunt/ccla/pages/director.htm

It's a horrible story of abuse of authority by police and CPS authorities.

-CM

Wally_in_Cincy

05-26-2004, 06:53 AM

There have been hundreds of people here falsely accused and imprisoned, as it started with the supposed discovery of "repressed memory". It was like mass hysteria like the Salem witch hunts.

The pinnacle was the McMartin day care debacle in the late 80's. Fortunately in the last few years the prosecutorial zealotry has abated to a great degree.

On a personal level, I married a woman in 1987 who had a 7-year-old daughter. I made absolutely sure that I was never alone with that kid for probly at least the first 3 or 4 years of our marriage just so there was no question about such a thing.

nAz

05-26-2004, 09:14 AM

Man that suxS! being falsely accused of pedophilia, sad thing is that for every one that is falsely accused there are probably ten that get a way with it. /ccboard/images/graemlins/frown.gif